


the girl with charming brown eyes

by VesperRegina



Category: Sabrina (1995)
Genre: F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:42:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29901966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VesperRegina/pseuds/VesperRegina
Summary: After the trip to Martha's Vineyard, Linus contemplates his life choices.
Relationships: Sabrina Fairchild/Linus Larrabee
Kudos: 4





	the girl with charming brown eyes

**Author's Note:**

> The earliest date I have for writing this is 2013, but I feel sure I'd written it much earlier. In that early form I was never satisfied with it, so I took some time to tear it apart and reform it. This seems to have helped.

"Where do you live, Linus?"

The words were simple, gentle, and...

Linus tips his glass, the tinkle of ice in whisky soft against the side, a musical note that blends well with the crickets and the breeze. He notes it, but takes no relief in the peace that surrounds him, Sabrina's words rankling.

He's alone with the moonlight and every one of her observations throughout the day. He stares out into the yard, considers the question, weighing it against the murmur of his conscience too many would, with adamant voice, say that he does not possess.

Where do you live, she'd asked, pitting the value of his work against the value of his being, tangibility against intangibility.

Linus raps his fingers against the patio table. A simple question that no one had ever asked him before, never thought to consider asking.

He has no answer to such bare sincerity, has been unable to counter Sabrina's observations of his life without letting truth mix with his lies. It's grit in his shoes, an itch that cannot be scratched, a foggy morning when one needs sunshine.

A simple question with so much meaning, honest and careful, without an ounce of deviousness, when that's all that he's become accustomed to hearing. 

Too many years he's been in business to be ignorant of how others think of him, regardless of what he'd told Sabrina. To his face they tell him his uncompromising nature is refreshing, but behind his back they call him ruthless. To feign ignorance of this is useful, not detrimental.

He has built his family and himself an empire of safety, and he's the first to say he regrets nothing. Tangibility has provided security, given his family everything they could possibly need. Given his brother whatever he's wanted. 

All because he could, because it's what he knows he was born to do, because generations of his family laid the foundation for it, and he was never one to break with tradition. Pride is not a sin when the accomplishments have been earned through hard work, Linus wants to tell Sabrina, that he's worked so hard to be here.

She'd see through it in a heartbeat and he'd have to face the pity in her eyes as he'd say it.

He brings his drink to his lips, swallows down the words and his pride with them. He's old enough to know that even honesty can be a form of lashing out.

No one has ever asked him who he is when everything else is stripped away. Only Sabrina, and she knows full well what she wanted to do in asking the question. Knows full well that it was a question meant to pierce, a thorny seed intended to cling and grow and the choice left in his hands as to what he's meant to do.

He's already in the middle of what must be done. This is work, and he's never shirked work before.

Not like David. David, for whom Linus has always been the leash.

Another swallow of his drink. The irony isn't lost on him, that everything he has set in motion is the same thing David would do. It doesn't matter. If this is what needs to be done, then it must be done. There will be time enough for dealing with consequences after Sabrina is gone.

He'll forget her in time. For David, this will be easy. For Sabrina, less so.

For himself...

She'd been so harmless so many years ago. A little girl with charming brown eyes, honest trusting brown eyes, eyes that could only see David, following him with them, yearning naked on her face. Harmless infatuation. Harmless, sweet, quiet child, easily pushed to the background, until that night when she'd laid her heart bare to someone who ostensibly didn't know she existed. Now, those eyes have been turned away from David.

Taking David's place was a duty, a way to head off trouble brewing, and he'd done it, watched Sabrina's face in the solarium, the different emotions chasing across it, like curtains drifting a slow dance across a window. Her eyes then were as trusting as they were in asking him her question. As trusting as the momentary yielding of her mouth to his, the curvature of her lips, her warm breath against his own.

She'd granted him forgiveness. She shouldn't have.

What Sabrina wants is for Linus to face something other, be something other, than what he's always been. Her perspicacity has been plain since the solarium, is plain in her clear, appealing eyes, plain in her question.

He doesn't only work in the real world, he also lives there. He cannot afford mistakes, cannot bend or change enough to stop being David's leash.

David will probably never thank him for saving him from this stupidest of mistakes.

God knows if he'll be able to forgive himself.


End file.
